Symbols of Troubled Times

Symbols of troubled times
Kamila Hayat
The News, January 11, 2007

Along most major roads in Lahore and other cities, there are giant billboards advertising various products. The boards show happy, obviously prosperous people -- joyfully enjoying new electronic gadgets or munching food items of various descriptions.

As the bitter-cold January evenings fall, with temperatures plummeting down to below freezing point, tiny fires can sometimes be seen lit under these towering boards. Around the weak flames in which scraps of wood and paper burn, small groups of people huddle -- many inadequately dressed given the weather conditions.

They include the thousands of homeless people who live in every city, many having arrived from smaller towns or villages in a desperate search for work. Most among them will spend the night out of doors – along the pavements that run under the underpasses or under shop awnings. Some -- particularly the old and the sick -- will die, with the winter already having claimed 15 lives in the Punjab.

There are also other symbolic sights which provide some kind of insight into the times. The Minar-e-Pakistan, its facade now yellowing in Lahore's pollution, marks a site where hundreds, possibly thousands, of the city's most impoverished people gather in every season. At night, people lie bundled under blankets and shawls, seeking to make it through to the next day. The scenes around the monument marking the inception of the country are a sobering reminder of what life for so many within it is like six decades after it was created.

According to a report released by the World Bank in 2006, South Asia, including Pakistan, now has rates of malnutrition higher than the countries of sub-Saharan Africa -- the nations that have long housed some of the most miserable people in the world. UNICEF has reported that a third of Pakistani children suffer from stunting – or a failure to acquire the mental and physical levels of growth expected for their age.

The rate of suicide in Pakistan has soared --partially in response to growing economic stresses. In 2006 alone, at least 2,000 people, most of them aged under 40 years of age, took their own lives. Many cited joblessness, financial difficulties or tensions created within homes due to these factors as a reason for doing so.

Yet, designer handbags that are sold for prices running to six figures or more, clothes that cost still larger sums of money, shoes, sun-glasses and other luxury items, according to shop owners, vanish swiftly off shelves. People pay sums of thousands of rupees for entry into New Year's events, balls, fashion shows or other occasions where the rich and the fashionable in every city gather.

Whereas differences in income levels and the advantages of privilege exist everywhere in the world, there is something obscene about a society which grants most of its citizens no opportunities for progress in life, but at the same time flaunts wealth and consumerism increasingly openly. Indeed, through a warped education system and a denial to people of a chance to acquire any kind of meaningful learning, the gap has been deliberately kept intact.

The divide of course has been there for many decades, indeed for centuries. But the extent to which it has widened between different categories of people since the time when, as one example, before the age of air-conditioners almost everyone slept outdoors, under mosquito nets, is immense.

The new consumerism sweeping cities, the advertising which dominates television time, the blatant pushing of purchasable commodities as a key to happiness, has aggravated matters. The symptoms of the quite fearful dangers that lurk below the surface are still extremely subtle --but they do exist.

During a recent house robbery in Lahore, the young men, who had removed cash and jewellery after holding an elderly couple and their sons at gunpoint, deliberately defaced some of the paintings and photographs on the wall. When asked why they were doing so, they replied that they 'hated all rich people', such as the owners of the home.

The multiplying street crimes, the murders committed for the sake of a mobile phone, the surveys that show college students most desire consumer goods of various kinds and say they would steal to obtain them, are also a sign of the resentment simmering amongst ordinary people. These feelings have risen to the forefront, with alarming consequences, at certain times -- for example during the riots that broke out early last year in the guise of protests against blasphemous cartoons published in a Danish newspaper. In effect, the anarchy seen on that day represented the blind anger of many young people, eager to get even with those they saw as better-off than themselves.

People who live along the Bedian Road in Lahore, a site for many new 'farm houses' but also an area which houses some of the poorest people in Lahore, recently reported an unusual game played by local children. The small boys and girls would first enact the scenes spotted at the up-market party which take place every weekend on one or the other of the 'farm houses', with people driving up in smart cars, the serving of the usual tit-bits by uniformed waiters, the dancing and the dining. But in the children's version of events -- the party ended when local people swarmed the premises, consuming the food and, sometimes, driving away in the luxury cars.

This entire scenario, so far at least, is a figment of childish imaginations. In some ways perhaps it is no different to the young female domestic servant found trying on her mistresses lipsticks or shoes. But, in other ways, it bears a reminder of the kind of sentiments that run through society, and which, in time, may rise to the forefront.

The desire then for some kind of social justice, for some attempt to narrow the gaping gulf dividing people, is very real. The question is whether rulers can address this reality through policy reforms and a review of the kind of society that has been created before it results in still more of the violence that is demonstrated through the rising rate of crime and the anger that is as yet hidden pours out from the 'abadis' where the poor live to the streets dominated by billboards, shops, plazas and the other emblems of wealth.